Daily Cheese: ARENA LACROSSE LEAGUE Announced

Allan Harvie, a former minor league hockey team owner, announced yesterday that he is founding a new pro indoor lacrosse league called the Arena Lacrosse League (ALL). He’s planning for the league to start play by February 2011.

Allan Harvie, the former owner of the Richmond Renegades, held a press conference yesterday to announce a new indoor lacrosse league he has started. Called the Arena Lacrosse League, it will begin in February 2011, play a 20to 24-game schedule and operate as a nonprofit organization.

All the profits from the league will go to an organization called virginians4haiti, a humanitarian group Harvie started in January to provide relief to the Caribbean nation that was left in ruins after a massive earthquake. When funding for the group began to slow, he decided he would use the ALL, which was already in the process of forming, to fund virginians4haiti.

“I thought it would allow an opportunity to combine two passions,” Harvie said. “And everybody wins.”

Harvie will serve as commissioner of the ALL.

He hopes to have teams in Richmond, Norfolk, Hampton, Charlottesville, Upper Marlboro, Md., Charlotte, N.C., Fayetteville, N.C. and Winston-Salem, N.C. While none of the locations have confirmed franchises, Harvie said he is in serious talks with three and hopes to have five or six by February.

Editor’s note: And here’s where things get interesting…

A camp will be held in January for interested players to try out. Teams will draft players from the camp to form their rosters. Each team can have 16 players in uniform and will have $2,900 per game to pay its players. The team that wins the game will get an extra $1,000. Coaches can be paid no more than $35,000 per year.

Editor’s note: This bring us to a very important set of questions… How much do NLL players get paid? Coaches? Is it on a per game basis? How many players would actually be willing to leave the NLL to play in the ALL?

“In the last 10 years, participation in lacrosse at all levels has come up 548 percent,” Harvie said.

The rules of the ALL will be similar to the National Lacrosse League, with a few changes. The NLL operates only in major cities and is the only other indoor lacrosse league in the country. Eventually, Harvie hopes for the two leagues to be affiliated.

I guess this means that he would own all teams? I'm not sure what “sponsorship” gets someone (except maybe the thrill of advertising)- if you can't call yourself a team owner than I'm going to assume nobody is going to jump on board. The nonprofit status makes things even trickier for the backoffice types.

Presumably he's thinking of this as an NLL minor league. Otherwise nobody from the NLL will jump except the practice team guys and the third stringers who are already living in the area and won't have to deal with per diems.

The more I think about it, the more this is the XFL with less money, less publicity, and less showmanship.